The Consummation of the Kingdom
Notes
Transcript
Call to Worship: Psalm 29:1-2 // Prayer
Call to Worship: Psalm 29:1-2 // Prayer
Adoration: Lord, yours is glory and strength. All your character and your ways shine out in the glory of your perfection, and all that you set out to do, you accomplish with limitless power and perfect wisdom. You are worthy of all the devotion of every angel and of every human heart.
Confession: But in spite of your glory, we have not loved you with all our hearts. We have loved comfort more than righteousness, our own reputations more than your glory, our own ways more than your wisdom. Father, forgive us, for we have sinned against you.
Thanksgiving: And show us once again that we are forgiven. For you have said, “Who can bring any charge against God’s chosen ones? It is God who justifies. Who is to condemn? Christ Jesus is the one who died—more than that, who was raised—who is at the right hand of God, who indeed is interceding for us.” We rejoice, since we cannot be separated from the love of Christ.
Supplication: Please teach us to worship you with our whole beings. And, please sustain Jeff and I in the task of shepherding this congregation—grow us in wisdom; guard us from pride and sin; give us love, truth, humility, and boldness in our work // we beg you for help for the congregation at Southwest Hills, as they go through this time of trouble: please point their hearts to you as their refuge, and give their feet a firm place to stand in your gospel // and we pray for the church in Mexico: that their good deeds would be evident to all, and that their gospel witness would be pure and bold // in our own country, we ask for President Biden, that you would bless him, give him health and protect him; we ask that you would turn his heart toward the gospel of grace; that you would steer his heart in matters of government, away from injustice and toward wisdom and justice // and now, as we turn to Your Word… encourage our hearts with the truth of your Kingdom’s victory
Family Matters
Family Matters
Right after benediction: table take down, sanctuary set up
Christmas Eve services: invitation--11 am service, 6:30 pm carol sing
White elephant on Wed. the 13th
Sign cards for our shut ins
Benediction
Benediction
You who sow in tears shall reap with shouts of joy! You who go out weeping, bearing the seed for sowing, shall come home with shouts of joy, bringing your sheaves with you.
From Psalm 126:5–6
Sermon
Sermon
Read: Revelation 11:15-18
Intro
Intro
So we’ve been asking the question, “How does the church relate to the nations?” “How do we, as believers, relate to our government and our country?”
And what we’ve seen so far is that Governments and Nations are a mix of good and evil, and we live among them as exiles of the coming Kingdom. And, we relate the nations as ambassadors of our King. But there’s one more major piece in this puzzle: how it’s all going to end.
If you know how something’s going to go ahead of time, it completely changes your attitude and your actions. If you could go back in time to May 15th, 1997, with $1000 in your pocket, you’d be rich. Because that’s the day Amazon went public. If you could go back and invest that $1000, you’d have about $2M here at the end of 2023. And since you would have gone back in time to do it, you wouldn’t be bothered when, some months, the stock price went down. You’d know where it was all going in the end. You’d be confident in the outcome. You’d invest as much as you could in Amazon stocks, and you’d cheerfully keep it there.
Brothers and sisters, if we have eyes to see, the exact same thing is true with the Kingdom of God—but in a much greater way. We know from God’s Word that, in spite of the evil in this world, the Kingdom will advance with power until the King returns.
The only trouble is, we easily lose sight of the Kingdom’s power.
On the one hand, like Peter, we may see the fury of the waves and the depth of the dark waters, and forget our King’s power, and start to sink. Yes, the world is dark. But we forget that all the sovereign power of the Spirit of God stands behind the gospel of the Kingdom. As the gospel goes forward, God’s victory over darkness advances, one human heart at a time.
On the other hand, we may confuse political or cultural advances with the success of God’s Kingdom. This feels right at first; but then, when darkness gains the upper hand in our culture, it seems to us as though the Kingdom is loosing, and we become gloomy or discouraged.
The antidote to this discouragement is to remember where this is all going, and the road that Scripture says it is going to take. And that’s what we’ll look at this morning—a truth to calm our hearts and put steel in our spines for the work ahead of us: evil may increase, but the Kingdom will advance with power until the King returns.
And we will look at this road and this destination in three steps:
First, we’ll see that evil really is a dominant force in our world, and will be so until our King returns.
But second, we’ll see that, in spite of this, the Kingdom will go forward with power until the King returns.
And third, we’ll see that when the King returns, evil will be defeated, and the Kingdom will be victorious.
The Power of Evil
The Power of Evil
So, we’ve already seen that evil is the natural condition of the nations in this fallen world. As Psalm 2:1-2 says:
Why do the nations rage and the peoples plot in vain? The kings of the earth set themselves, and the rulers take counsel together, against the Lord and against his Anointed, saying,
In other words, humanity and its rulers are a boiling cauldron of rebellion against God. And this problem can be seen on the level of individual selfishness and pride—even believers struggle against these things in our own hearts. And this problem can also be seen all the way up to the level of national atrocities, idolatries, oppressions, wars.
And living in a world like this, it is not hard to see why someone might become pessimistic. These things don’t just come at us through pictures and videos of distant conflicts—they also touch our families, our communities—everything. The world is a dark place
=> Now, as we get into this, I want to acknowledge that there are genuine differences of opinion here between thoughtful Christians. Some think that the world will get better and better under the influence of the gospel, until Christ returns. Others think it will remain about the same, and still others, that it will get worse until the return of Christ. This is not an issue which should divide Christians.
=> This morning, you’re going to hear my own interpretation of this for a few minutes. But I want to be clear: this is not an issue to divide over. And I trust that, by the end of the sermon, every believer here will be encouraged by the main point: the power of the gospel and the glory of Jesus’ return.
So, with that said, let’s hear Jesus’s own description of the time between his first and second coming, from Matthew 24 (and you can turn there in your Bibles) starting in verse 6:
And you will hear of wars and rumors of wars. See that you are not alarmed, for this must take place, but the end is not yet. For nation will rise against nation, and kingdom against kingdom, and there will be famines and earthquakes in various places. All these are but the beginning of the birth pains.
So, according to our Lord, the nations would rage for a good long time before he returns—nation against nation
This describes the general pattern of nations attempting to devour each other in pride and greed, or destroy each other in fear and anger—with all the severe human suffering that accompanies these things.
So what does this tell us about the character of this age? It is evil. Wars and rumors of wars are the norm.
=> And by the way, this should caution us about “prophecy update” ministries—well meaning brothers and sisters who love to play the matching game between newspaper articles and Bible passages. That’s been practiced for a long time, and it has a poor record.
=> All these things, according to Jesus, are “but the beginning of the birth pains” of this age—normal life between the first and second advents of Christ.
In other words, we live in an age characterized by mass political conspiracy and evil. And I’m not referring to the last few decades. I’m talking about the whole age from the time of Christ until he returns.
Jesus goes on:
“Then they will deliver you up to tribulation and put you to death, and you will be hated by all nations for my name’s sake. And then many will fall away and betray one another and hate one another. And many false prophets will arise and lead many astray. And because lawlessness will be increased, the love of many will grow cold. But the one who endures to the end will be saved.
So, God’s people will generally be hated by these conspiring nations. Even in Western Christendom, that has so often been the case—that true Christians are not liked by the government—scorned by the culture. And so, persecution is the norm for us—we will endure heavy external opposition until Jesus returns.
But also, Jesus says, “Many will fall away and betray” and also, “many false prophets will arise and lead many astray,” and “lawlessness will be increased,” and “the love of many will grow cold.”
So, it’s also within the Church, that there will be a lot of turmoil, struggle, false teaching, and cold hearts.
That’s what will characterize the Church—pressures without and struggles within. Evil, battering us from outside, and evil seeping up within.
=> Brothers and sisters, this should have a huge influence on our posture as Christians. I was talking with one sister in Christ a few years ago, and she said with total sincerity and humility, “I’m just so tired of Christians playing around and not being serious about Jesus. I just want Jesus.” There is this idea out there, that if we can just dress up our faith enough with the things that our neighbors value—if we can just present the gospel in a way that is attractive to the values of a particular culture—whether that culture is:
Downtown, progressive, justice-centered, we’re-going-to-change-the-world culture,
Or whether it’s countryside, conservative, American Dream, white-picket-fence culture,
Or anything else!
We think: “Well, we can win people to Christ that way, so that’s what we’ll do.” But what did Jesus say?
And because lawlessness will be increased, the love of many will grow cold. But the one who endures to the end will be saved.
=> Brothers and sisters, we need to recon with that. Because the kind of gospel witness that tries to make friends with the world, produces a faith that can’t endure the rage of the nations or the struggle within the Church—a faith that doesn’t endure to the end. A faith that doesn’t save, because it never truly included bowing the knee to King Jesus, and trusting only in him.
=> The world that we live in is dark. And so, it requires a gospel witness that is bold, that doesn’t blunt the sharp edges of God’s Word, that is honest about the full gospel. Why is the grace of God in Christ good news? Because apart from God’s grace, according to Psalm 2, your destiny is to be shattered like pottery when Christ the King returns. He will destroy all evil, and that includes you. But he offers you mercy today: because he was shattered in your place on the cross, you can be saved from the coming judgement through him. And if you come to him for salvation, he will not merely save you from judgement, but he will bring you to the Father as a beloved child—a citizen of the kingdom—forever. That is the gospel. And what does Jesus say in verse 14?
And this gospel of the kingdom will be proclaimed throughout the whole world as a testimony to all nations, and then the end will come.
=> So, in this whole passage, Jesus has described the general character of the era between his first and second comings. [Now, it does seem to me, from passages like 2 Thess. 2, that toward the end of the age, things will get worse.] But the character of the age won’t fundamentally change: It is an evil age, in which the nations rage against us, and spiritual corruption seeps up within us.
The Power of the Gospel
The Power of the Gospel
Now, that is the bad news, in a sense. And we need to feel the weight of it, to have the right posture in this age. It pushes it not to water down the gospel. And also, it frees us to love our neighbors. If we are surprised when the world opposes us, or when the church experiences trouble, we will become defensive and disillusioned. But if we understand that it’s just the character of this age, and that God is on the throne, then we are free to love our neighbors warmly, even when they are morally and culturally enemies of God.
But maybe you noticed something else about that last verse—Matthew 24:14. What will happen throughout the whole world until the end of the age? The gospel of the Kingdom will be proclaimed. At the end of the gospel of Matthew, here’s how Jesus described it:
And Jesus came and said to them, “All authority in heaven and on earth has been given to me. Go therefore and make disciples of all nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit, teaching them to observe all that I have commanded you. And behold, I am with you always, to the end of the age.”
So, this age is evil—full of raging nations. But what else defines it? “All authority in heaven and on earth has been given” to our King. And it is on that basis that we are commanded to go make disciples among the nations.
So it’s not just that the gospel would be spoken among the nations—it’s that the gospel would go forward with the full power of the Risen King behind it. And that defines this age. The light of the glory of God has dawned on the world in the face of Jesus Christ. And as John wrote:
The light shines in the darkness, and the darkness has not overcome it.
Do you believe that? I find that, sometimes when I’m sharing the gospel, I fail. I leave out something that I think might offend. I soft petal. I compromise. One of my problems in those moments is that I fail to believe that the darkness is really dark, but also that the light is truly glorious, and that the power of the King stands behind the good news of his grace. It is not my cleverness, or lack of cleverness, that will cause someone to believe. It is the simple message—the foolishness of the cross—that has all the power of the Spirit of God behind it.
This is the gospel that Peter preached in Act 2. Then, you can follow the rest of the book of Acts, and what happens? Soon the gospel is pushed out from Jerusalem to all Judea. Then it goes to Samaria. Then to the gentiles in Palestine. Then to Asia Minor. Then Greece. Then Rome. At that point, the book of Acts comes to an end. But the powerful expansion of the gospel has not.
Do you believe this? Do you believe that the gospel you’ve been commissioned to take to unbelievers is backed by divine power? The success of it is not in us, but in God. As Paul said,
But we have this treasure in jars of clay, to show that the surpassing power belongs to God and not to us.
So if this is true—if all the power of God stands behind his gospel, and if the advance of the gospel cannot be stopped by evil, then what should our posture be in this age?
Courage, peace, joy, confidence. We are like warriors who fight by preaching the gospel, whose confidence is not in our own strength, but in our King who promised to be with us, even to the end of the age.
Our call to war, to love the captive soul,
But to rage against the captor
And with the sword that makes the wounded whole
We will fight with faith and valor
When faced with trials on ev'ry side,
We know the outcome is secure,
And Christ will have the prize for which He died
An inheritance of nations
In spite of the evil of this age, we know that the gospel will advance with power until our King returns.
The Triumph of the King
The Triumph of the King
And so, a good deal of our joy in the conflict comes from knowing the power of God that is with us in this age, and that stands behind our gospel witness.
But there is a second thing which gives us great courage and joy in this evil age: the promised our King’s return:
Then the seventh angel blew his trumpet, and there were loud voices in heaven, saying, “The kingdom of the world has become the kingdom of our Lord and of his Christ, and he shall reign forever and ever.” And the twenty-four elders who sit on their thrones before God fell on their faces and worshiped God, saying, “We give thanks to you, Lord God Almighty, who is and who was, for you have taken your great power and begun to reign. The nations raged, but your wrath came, and the time for the dead to be judged, and for rewarding your servants, the prophets and saints, and those who fear your name, both small and great, and for destroying the destroyers of the earth.”
In other words, when our King returns, the raging nations will be silenced, and replaced with his Kingdom, of which we are citizens.
And the fracture which happened in humanity at the Tower of Babel will be reversed: This new Kingdom will be filled with citizens from every tribe, tongue, and nation, all rescued by the gospel of grace.
And not only humanity, but all creation itself will be remade, and healed.
This is the unstoppable plan of God. And on this basis, I urge you, be courageous and joyful in the face of this present darkness. Invest your whole heart into this one stock that cannot fail: the spread of the gospel. Yes, evil is strong. But the Gospel that you’ve been charged to take to the nations will advance with power until the King returns.
